Estey Artist Model Bellefontaine Chapel

Estey Artist Model Reed Organ

BASIC INFO

Can be seen in Bellfontaine Cemetery chapel in St. Louis, Mo.

(Click photo to go to St. Louis Post Dispatch article)

Robert Ruby who played the debut event in the Chapel prepares to do some practicing on the organ

Duane Adams, who does most of our reed organ restoration and is prominently featured on our reed organ videos has this to say about it:

"This organ is a really fine instrument and the acoustics in the cemetery chapel are perfect for this organ. It makes it sound much bigger than it is, and after many hours of tuning (and re-tuning) I finally got the reeds to stay "happy" where they were and this is one of the best sounding organs I have ever worked on. It is a joy to hear this one.

it is called the Estey "Artists" Organ and is an early case style "Z". It has seven sets of reeds in the treble and five sets of reeds in the bass, plus an octave of Sub Bass.

The organ # is: 339558 and is dated in the inside Sept. 1903

From the information that I have, this is somewhat different from later "Artist" organs.

It has 15 stops

Bass Coupler

Sub Bass 16'

Bass Oboe 8'

Bass Vox Jubilante 8'

Melodia 8'

Viola 4'

Bass Harp Aeoline 2'

Vox Humana

Treb. Harp Aeoline 2'

Flute 4'

Diapason 8'

Treb. Vox Jubilante 8'

Treb. Oboe 8'

Clarionet 16'

Treble Coupler

Because the 2 foot Harp Aeoline reeds in the treble were so tiny [difficult to tune and easily damaged], I decided that I would tune the rest of the organ to whatever those reeds were. I found that they were mostly tuned 20 cents flat of A=440, so the rest of the organ was tuned to match those.

On the top of the soundboard on the treble end (front side) is stamped "H.W. Sanders"

On the rear of the soundboard near the Sub Bass, the initials "G.S.P." is stamped into the wood.

I pulled two and a half RAT skeletons out of it. Rats had lived in this organ for a long time, but for some unexplainable reason, they did not chew anything up. (maybe St. Cecilia was watching over this organ).

This organ smelled really bad and I had to do a lot to get rid of the rat smells."

To see more pics of this restoration go through the following pages.



Coming soon photo pages